The key to Mrs. Taylor’s life was touched by General Taylor himself, who, when receiving from an appointed speaker, at Baton Rouge, the official announcement that he was elected President of the United States, among other things said:
“For more than a quarter of a century, my house has been the tent, and my home the battle-field.” This statement, which might have been used with propriety as figurative language by any officer who had been for more than a quarter of a century on active duty, was literally true of General Taylor’s experience. He was emphatically a hard-working officer: either from choice or accident, his public life was never varied by those terms of “official repose” which give officers a rest at Washington, at West Point, or at head-quarters in some large city.
On the contrary, General Taylor, from the time he entered the army as a lieutenant until he laid aside his well-earned commission as a Major-General to assume the highest responsibility of Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, had never been out of what might be termed the severest frontier duties.
He was known as having acquired the largest experience as an Indian fighter. He was alike the hero of the “Black Hawk,” as he was the most prominent officer in the Seminole war. Hence it is that Mrs. Taylor, more than any other mistress of the White House, had seen more army service, and passed through more varied frontier experiences; for she would never, under any circumstances, if she could avoid it, separate herself from her husband, no matter how severe were the trials resulting from wifely devotion.
This heroic spirit, that gives such grace and beauty to useful qualities, carried her cheerfully to Tampa Bay, that she might be near her husband when he was endeavoring to suppress the wily Seminoles in the swamps and everglades of Florida; and as the long previous years in the western country made her familiar with the attributes of savage triumphs, so the final defeats that eventually secured our settlers a peaceful home on the rich plains of Mexico, and laid the foundation of the prosperity of the great West.
In all this quarter of a century so feelingly alluded to by General Taylor, as the time when his house was a tent and his home the battle-field, it was seldom that Mrs. Taylor was not at his side, bearing her share of the hardships incidental to her husband’s life, and cheerfully attending to the duties which fell to her to perform. All this while the modest accommodations were acceptable, the log-cabin in winter, the tent if necessary in summer, with the coarse but substantial food of the soldiers, and often even this not in abundance. Deprived of the little elegancies which are so necessary for a woman’s comfort—separated from the society of her children, who were almost always away at school—nothing stood in the way of her fealty to her husband, and she was content thus to live.
Through all these trying circumstances Mrs. Taylor, by her good sense, her modesty, her uncomplaining spirit, her faculty of adding to the comforts and surroundings of her husband’s life, filled the measure of her duty, and set an example of the true woman, especially a soldier’s wife, that her sex for all time can admire and point to as worthy of imitation.
Her domestic duties, so far as they related to the comfort of her family, she would never intentionally abandon for a single day to menial hands. Especially was she careful in the preparation of the food for the table, and however simple the meal might be, she saw that the material was carefully prepared. And this home training General Taylor displayed when in Northern Mexico, away from his domestic care; for while he was indifferent to a degree about luxuries, yet what he did eat, he persisted in having carefully selected and prepared with due regard to healthfulness; and his tent was ever a model of neatness and rude comfort.
Mrs. Taylor’s maiden name was Margaret Smith. She was born in Maryland, and came of a family identified for their substantial qualities which distinguished intelligent agriculturists. She received such an education as was at the command of female pupils in the beginning of the century. An education which considered the practical, rather than the intellectual, and to this plane of her school life she was trained with special care in all the accomplishments of domestic duties.
“Maryland housekeeping” was for years in the southwest, and is still among the “old settlers,” a complimentary remark, if applied to a lady from any part of the country, so excellent was considered the housewives’ work of those who learned their duties on the tidewaters of the Chesapeake Bay, and among those examples of domestic perfection in her State, Mrs. Taylor was eminent. And to be more than this—to make her home happy—she evidently had no ambition. Marrying an officer of the United States army, who was born in Kentucky, and was appointed from private life, her husband had no associations that took him to the North, which, independent of official opportunities, are increased by a student’s career at West Point. “Captain Taylor” was therefore, from the beginning of his public life, confined to the frontiers, and was known as one of the “hard-working,” and “fighting officers.” His boyhood days were made up of adventures with Indians, and around the fireside of his own home, listening to his father and his father’s friends, talk over the struggles, sufferings, and triumphs they endured as active participators in the Revolution, under the leadership of General Washington and General Wayne, and of their subsequent hard lives after they left Virginia, to found homes “in the dark and bloody ground.”